High Noon

This is a stub for an article about the screenplay for the motion picture "High Noon" released in 1952. Carl Foreman is credited with writing the screenplay from the story "Tin Star" by John W. Cunningham. The screenplay is important to screenwriters for a number of reasons:

First, because of its conceit, which is to tell the story in real time.

Second, because of its extremely efficient storytelling. There is virtually no waste of any kind in the script.

Third, because the screenplay reinvented the western genre by turning the ordinary conventions of the western on their heads. For example, the townspeople Will Kane stood up for and saved now turn their backs on him and want him to flee across the prairie where he will surely be killed so they will be left in peace. In the third act, Will Kane runs from the villains through the town and is saved only when his pacifist bride shoots one of them in the back. In the end, Will Kane throws down his tin star and leaves the town with his bride.

Carl Foreman was an important and prolific screenwriter. High Noon is one of many important scripts he wrote.